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Touchpad manufacturer Synaptics has announced the beta launch of its Scrybe gesture workflow software that will see future - and existing - PCs getting Mac-like gesture controls and more.

Expanding on the initial touchpad navigation trends pioneered by Apple through their MacBook Pro line of laptops, Scrybe is designed to add advanced, yet intuitive touch-based controls to any compatible Synaptics touchpads that go well beyond simple flick based movements to flip between pages or scroll through documents.

For example, instead of having to cut and paste text from a document into a browser-based search engine box, through Scrybe users can simply highlight the term and draw a question mark with their finger to trigger an automatic web search on the query.

Our hands-on tests with the software also showed off convenient functionality such as tracing a square box to launch iTunes directly from the desktop, or drawing an "@" symbol to launch an email application of your choice.

More intriguing though is the customisable aspect of the software which allows PC OEMs and end users alike to personalise gestures to enhance user efficiency for all manner of internet, media, entertainment, and productivity applications.

Outside of some standard commands that Synaptics intends on making universal, the customisation aspects hints that a race by OEMs to create the most intuitive, natural feeling set of commands for everyday computer tasks could be under way.

Better yet, the gesture technology is optimised for multi-touch compatible touchpads and is bound to receive tweaks as it begins to be pre-packaged with future laptops as well as being backwards compatible with Synaptics existing single-touch TouchPads already in the market.

Since this group currently represents about 70% of all laptop touch pads world-wide, there’s a good chance even those with older laptops can experience the benefits and productivity enhancements made available through the technology.

Those of you eager to try Scrybe out for yourself can visit UScrybe.com to learn if your current laptop's touchpad is compatible and to sign up for participation in the beta program.